Considering that Black Hole Heaven has, to put it delicately, flown below most media's radar, it's unlikely to become saturated with big-hit radio airplay. Nor shall any wayward record store denizen happen upon it via images from glossy magazine spreads or puffy, confessional interviews. All Joe or Jane Musicbuyer has to go on are bilious screeds by crit jocks such as the one before your eyes at this moment and, of course, that great equalizer and marketing godsend-- the album cover.

Black Hole Heaven, to one degree or another, has the cover it deserves: Hannah Marcus waxes wan before the observer, wearing what looks like pajamas, and sits in the middle of a dilapidated room. On the back cover, she wanders through a desert-y expanse, still in nightie, holding what appears to be a golf club. Her name is printed several times in the high-tech-font equivalent of peeling paint, and the record's title is scrawled below it in ragged handwriting. What you might expect from such an offering is sensitive, female singer/songwriter sensitivizing, full of yearning and pain and sorrow and emotion. As it turns out, Black Hole Heaven is chock-a-block with sensitive, female singer/songwriter sensitivizing, full of yearning and pain and sorrow and emotion.

Marcus strums and picks guitars, lays down beds of keyboard ambiance and sings at length-- and oh, what length it is!-- about depressing matters of the heart. Representative lines include: "I am a spider in my lacy bed/ Frozen open/ Waiting for your beak to spread," and, "Your heart's not made of stone/ It's made of shit/ And, man, it stinks." Anyone on the "irony rules our age" bandwagon is encouraged to pick this record up and be introduced to the quote-unquote benefits of complete sincerity.

Of course, there are some deviations from Marcus' demographic norm here. Black Hole Heaven's strongest moments are odd, noiry character sketches like "Jay," in which the narrator keens, "Jay, I took the stuff you sold me/ Turns out it was not ecstasy," amid scratchy, ambient guitar washes and staticky, affected vocals. Such musical oddity ("Stars from the Side" coasts on its cool, carnival-organ intro) and occasional, novelistic lyrical details elevate bits of the record to surprisingly clever heights. Just as often-- such as the post-carnival-organ portion of "Stars from the Side"-- soar to mock-heroic heights, like a budget Annie Lennox ballad.

In short, the thing that sinks Black Hole Heaven is Marcus' mistrust of her innate gift as a writer. Whenever she edges up on a strong musical or lyrical idea, she ends up backing away into whiny familiarity. Though her knack for a noisy hook and cruelly telling line could push her towards interesting work, Marcus ends up giving out with a set of intermittently interesting but largely tired-sounding pop songs. It's as if commercial hopes keep mucking with an inherently idiosyncratic, fringy talent. Black Hole Heaven wants to be a big, populist record, but its chances are ruined by its best qualities.

Once again, the art direction gives an indication of this problem. A few words in most of the songs are highlighted through their reproduction in larger, handwritten print. Taken in song order, they produce the following, unconscious singer-songwriter hit: "Crumbling hill/ Jay/ Two damn days/ Fell/ Crystal tit/ Cut you/ Down/ Dissolve/ Nothing/ Nothing/ Spit/ Something's changed/ Eyes." A set of disembodied clichés like these are bound to make big noise on the pop scene. Somebody set it to music and press it up-- it'll be a massive hit.

-Sam Eccleston